


Atacama

by theunwillingheart



Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Angst, F/M, Internalized cat-phobia?, Kyo is not the most poetic boy, Kyo's got a long way to go, Learning to fight for yourself because other people care about you, Not trying to be flippant, Pining, Rated T for morbid themes?, and mentions of cat death, but Kyo has some mean thoughts about cats in this one, except not quite yet, so I have to be poetic FOR HIM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunwillingheart/pseuds/theunwillingheart
Summary: After the class play, Kyo Sohma removes his costume in a daze.Set after “Sorta Cinderella” (or “Cinderella-ish”, depending on the translation).
Relationships: Honda Tohru/Sohma Kyou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Atacama

**Author's Note:**

> I do not always ship, but when I do, I lean into the pining for all it’s worth, my man.

After the class play, Kyo Sohma removes his costume in a daze.

The crafted trappings of a fairytale prince are shed without fanfare—cape, belt, cravat, boots. They were never really his to wear and come off easily. It occurs to him that he might shed his bracelet as well, and with it the human skin that papers over the sick, warped reality of him.

He can remove all he wants. There is no going back from what happened onstage—as if the stroke of midnight could erase the ball along with the carriage and horseman. The heroine has fled, but her glass slipper remains. Tomorrow the prince will come knocking, love demanding its due.

He retrieves the pieces of his school uniform and assumes them once more. These are more familiar than the princely garb but still not truly his. From one costume to another, then, until this play also ends.

As a child, he had loved reading books about marine life, about fish. He had done so unaware that to a starving creature, attention and hunger are inseparable. In his readings he had come across descriptions of the Atacama snailfish, an animal evolved to live under the pressure of tons upon tons of water at the bottom of the sea. Biologists who had tried to bring them to the surface for study had discovered that they dissolved at sea level, unable to tolerate the lack of pressure. Kyo now wonders if this feeling of dizzying dissolution in his chest is the same as what those fish felt as their bodies crumbled away in the scientists’ hands.

He should have known better than to go along with this. Kyo knows how to avoid discomfort, knows how to run away before the revelations come home. He did not need to star in “Sorta Cinderella”, a patchwork play, restless schoolkids running wild with their assigned roles. Diverging from an absurd script. And in the middle of it, him and Tohru. In the middle of everything these days, him and Tohru. It is amazing that he had not realized it before. It had taken a performance in front of dozens of onlookers for him to see what was in her eyes, her face. To know that his impossible feelings are returned.

It should be a simple thing, but it is not. For him, nothing can be simple. Even his physicality is complex, a monster inside of a cat inside of a boy. Held together by age-old prayer beads the colors of blood and bone. Both boy and bracelet are ancient underneath their shine, cyclical and too old to change.

Up until the moment of her fevered declaration, he had been resigned to what all his previous incarnations had been given. It was all that he could truly claim as his own, this bitter, recursive destiny. He had called it wisdom, called it strength, after years of futile clawing and scratching upwards, to finally arrive at acceptance. If nothing else, cats know when the end is near, know to slink away to die alone. They are proud creatures, unloving and unlovable; they will not take your pity, not a drop.

His resignation had turned the devastation of his oncoming confinement into something strangely noble. He had tried to relish the harmlessness of a life kept in a cage. Perhaps Tohru might visit him from time to time, and he might offer her, not candy, but pieces of himself. A cup of his tears, a lock of his orange hair. In his imagination she bore it as well as he did. A harmless life.

Not anymore. He remembers her eyes, her face.

Once he has composed himself, he walks out to meet Tohru in the hallway. Tohru smiles at him as if his world has not just dropped out from under him, left him spinning once more.

“Kyo!” she says, all warm energy and cheer. “Good job!” 

She is holding a stack of bento. Always in the middle of feeding someone, that girl.

Kyo nods toward the food. “Whatcha got there?” he asks.

“Oh,” says Tohru, following his gaze, “Well, Kisa and Hiro came to see the play. I’m just getting them some dinner. I don’t want them walking around in these crowds.”

The conversation lulls, leaving a silence that Kyo is unable to fill. For an uncomfortable moment he just looks at her, studying her expression, the boxes in her hands. Meals for more starving creatures. He does not have the words to tell her what he wants, what he does not want. _I do not want to take responsibility for the inevitability that has grown between us. I do not want to see your face when you discover the rotting corpse under the step. When you realize that though you may have held the poor thing for a time, it never belonged to you. Never belonged to anyone, never belonged anywhere. Leave me be; I yearn for you, but my heart cannot take the open air. To stay solid, to stay intact, I must remain buried in the lightless depths of the ocean._

Tohru visibly hesitates, then marches on, breaking the silence. 

“This festival has been a lot of fun!” she says, “I hope you’re enjoying it too!”

Kyo’s words return to him at last. “Yeah,” he says, scoffing slightly, “but seeing Master here nearly gave me a heart attack.”

He offers to carry the boxes for her, a familiar gesture met with her familiar gratitude. He is still spinning, but slower now, as the world begins to approach once more. He will go through the motions, keep this up until he no longer can. Until neither of them can.

One way or another, he will find a way to land on his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeahhhhh Kyo Sohma! I love this awkward boy.  
> 
> 
> Uh. I guess we’re going to forget that the Atacama snailfish is a pretty recent discovery, so… probably not something Kyo would have read about in his childhood? Look, I cannot defy the demands of art.


End file.
